Smithville, Texas Festival of Lights, a wonderful family festival, is December 4th, 2010. It is a fun day filled with a Main Street 5K, pictures with Santa, Holiday Markets, Art Shows, Kids’ Fest, Tricycle Races, Candyville Game, Train Rides, Gingerbreak Man Cookie Bake, a Lighted Dowtown Parade, and much more.

Playhouse Smithville’s Frosty vs. Abominable Snowman, written & directed by john daniels, jr., will open on December 4th and will run four performances: 12/4 (2pm & 7pm) and 12/11 (2pm & 7pm). Come down to the Smithville Festival of Lights celebration on December 4th and enjoy a day of great family entertainment including Playhouse Smithville’s production of Frosty vs. Abominable Snowman outside for the whole town to enjoy. Come see Ivory the North Pole’s star reporter sing “It’s Beginning to Look A Lot Like Christmas” and hear Frosty sing “The North Pole Boogie”! A cast of sixteen characters sing and dance in an American Idol style musical revue. Tickets are available at www.playhousesmithville.com or call (512) 360-7397.

“Go Wild in Smithville!” The Smithville Business Association is sponsoring its Second Annual Wildflower Event. The merchants in Historic Downtown Smithville will be giving away FREE packets of wildflower seeds (while supplies last). Each of the 18 locations will have a different variety. Start out on Main Street for your first free packet and a map of the participating locations. The “GO Wild in Smithville” celebration is being held on Saturday, May 1st from 10:00 AM – 5:00 PM. The Katy House Bed and Breakfast is one of the participating merchants. We are not on Smithville, Texas’ Historic Main Street, where all the antique shops are located, but one block away on Ramona and Second Street.

The European Woodworker (Combo/Bandsaw Seminar): April 24-25, 2010 – & November 13-14, 2010

Here is a description of classes coming this Spring, here in Smithville, TX. Sam’s shop is one block from our Bed and Breakfast, the Katy House. Come to the class, but spend time in Smithville, it’s a great Texas small town, with lots of antique shops on Main Street.

Sam wrote: I took a leap of faith years ago, sold my table saw, jointer, planer, little bandsaw and hollow chisel mortiser, and purchased a European Combination machine along with a bigger bandsaw (CU300 Smart and MM16) – and now I’m working with the company. That might tell you something about the way I feel for this concept. I’m in a much larger shop now than I was then, but the basic combination still works for me. If you are a one or two man operation or just looking to maximize space in your small shop this would be a good class for you to get the feel of how well this could work for you. Or, you have already taken the plunge and would like to get to know the combo concept and your particular machine better this very well could be an essential class for you.

The parlor, here at the Katy House Bed and Breakfast, is full of fold-up tables. You can not see the top of the tables because they are filled with paper, photos, stamps, rulers, type, ribbons, and all sorts of stuff I can not name. We have 10 ladies here for the weekend scrapbooking! This is their 6th year to come. We take most of the furniture out of the parlor, and they move in! There are type machines called Cricut that cuts letters and lots more.

They come early on Friday and scrap book late into the nights. We feed them three meals on Saturday and they leave around 3 pm on Sunday. There is always lots of laughter coming from the room. I just asked the group, “How many kids are mother-less this morning?” There are 15 kids, under the age of 18, with their dads today. I believe these ladies will return home today, having solved most of the problems of the world. They will return home refreshed from having time for themselves. They scrap, shop downtown Smithville, eat fried pickles at Pocket’s Grille, stay up till all hours, and did I mention ‘laugh’?

And of course, their photos from the past year will be on creative, wonderful pages, and in beautiful albums, with labels and notes. It is a fun weekend for us too!

Last Saturday was a Quilter’s Delight, here is Smithville. Downtown antique shops were displaying quilts in the store windows and out in front. There were over 140 quilts shown just on Main Street. Many old homes had quilts on balconies and porches.

There is a great historic building on Main Street that has an antique store on the first floor and a beautiful large townhome on the second floor. The front of the building has my family name on it. It was probably built by my great grandfather or my grandfather, Yerger Hill, in 1895.

This store is a favorite of our guests at the Bed and Breakfast. It’s so much fun to tell our guests that shopping and dining are just a short walk from the B & B.

Milk & Honey Antiques, at 218 Main Street, Smithville, Texas specializes in objects and furniture that range from beautiful to bizarre. The collection includes European and American furniture,antique and fine jewelry, oriental carpets, books, vintage clothing, pharmaceutical collectables, kitchen collectables and a large variety of “mantiques” such as fishing and hunting items. Their hours are 10:00 AM to 5:00 PM Wednesday through Saturday and 1:00 PM to 5:00 PM Sunday. Be sure to include this shop as you tour our beautiful town. Sallie Blalock